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Happy Thursday folks!

Here is my favorite passage of the week, two quotes and book of the week with two important lessons to ponder on:

Passage of the Week:

American psychiatrist and Writer Anna Lembke on key to well-being:

Two Quotes:

Book of the Week with 2 Important Lessons:

The book of the week is The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday.

This book shares with us the collective wisdom of ancient philosophers and greatest thinkers in order to help us accomplish the very specific and increasingly urgent goal we all share: overcoming obstacles. Mental obstacles. Physical obstacles. Emotional obstacles. Perceived obstacles.

Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps. It’s three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception (it’s how we see, understand what occurs around us and what we decide those events will mean), Action (everything must be done in the service of the whole), and the Will (our internal power, which can never be affected by the outside world).

The book contains ruthless pragmatism and stories from history that illustrate the arts of relentless persistence and indefatigable ingenuity. It teaches us how to turn the many negative situations we encounter in our lives into positive ones. As Marcus Aurelius says, the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Here are two important lessons from the book:

1) Recognize Your Power and Control Your Emotions:

We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist. We decide whether we’ll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of. Which is to say, we are never completely powerless.

Obstacles makes us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check, if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate.

The Greek had a word for this: apatheia. It’s the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of harmful, unhelpful kind. Don’t let the negativity in, don’t let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can’t afford to panic.

2) Get Moving:

In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matter what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given. And the only way you’ll do anything spectacular is by using it all to your advantage.

We talk a lot about courage as a society, but we forget that as its most basic level it’s really just taking action: whether that’s approaching someone you’re intimidated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn. All the greats you admire started by saying, Yes, let’s go. And they usually did it in less desirable circumstances than we’ll ever suffer.

Just because the conditions aren’t exactly to your liking, or you don’t feel ready yet, doesn’t mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.

Books I am currently reading:

Mistakes That Made Me a Millionaire: How to Transform Setbacks into Extraordinary Success by Kim Perell. In this book, Kim Perell shows how mistakes aren’t detours but stepping stones, offering a roadmap to bounce back with confidence and transform failures into opportunities.

How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend by Rachel Barr. A delight-filled, evidence-based guide to taking better care of our brain; so it, in turn, will take better care of us.

Poems & Prayers by Matthew McConaughey. An inspiring, faith-filled, and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream, belief.